Valentine's Day 2023. Once again, Twitter birds were humming about love, and all things sweet were on the Instagram menu. 

Let’s look at the online conversations around the holiday in 2023, dive into the trending topics, and explore how brands joined in on all the love stories.

Quick-fire stats about the day of love

  • There were over 11 million mentions of Valentine’s Day during the month leading up to the holiday. Six million of those happened on the very day, February 14, even though this year’s Super Bowl was still a hot topic.
  • Valentine's Day is still a worldwide love affair that didn’t drop in popularity in online conversations compared to last year. Despite all the global crises, the holiday saw a similar volume of conversations as last year.
  • Joy is the leading sentiment across conversations about Valentine’s Day on social media, no contest.

Who are those love birds chirping online?

This year, we’re seeing close to a 50/50 split between men and women that took to social media to discuss the lovers’ holiday.

Most of the conversation starters on Twitter were artists (46%), followed by executives (14%), students (7%), and then journalists (6%).

The Valentine’s Day buzz was evident all across the globe, but the bulk of the conversation originated in the USA (36%), followed by Japan (9%), the UK (7%), and India (6%).

Now, let’s zoom in closer and hear more about the Valentine's Day stories.

What’s hot on Valentine’s Day?

The love-related topics and hijacking news attempts were a thing again this year. Most of the conversations were about chocolate, flowers, gifts, and giveaways, but there were also some original angles to the lovefest.

Hijacking the holiday and owning it

Netflix and their show You sparkled a fun note on Valentine's Day by sharing the love around the holiday in a way that was very much in tune with the show’s sarcastic tone of voice.

A cure for broken hearts

For the singletons, Valentine’s Day has always been a challenging experience. Here’s an interesting campaign by a zoo in Texas that became popular on social media. 

The initiative is called 'I named a cockroach after my ex for Valentine's Day,' which – as the name implies – lets you name a cockroach or rodent Jessie or Blake (or whatever your ex’s name is) before it is fed to the carnivores.

Needless to say, the campaign went viral.

An eternal love affair with sustainability

The UN shined bright like a diamond ring during this year’s Valentine’s Day conversations by showing love to the planet and reminding everyone of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

What’s your Valentine’s Day emoji?

How many hearts can one person post on Valentine's Day? In fact, the most used emojis were food items, like sweets or chocolate.

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Now, let’s talk about the V-day gifts. 

How much do you love me this Valentine’s Day?

For many people, gifts are their love language, and this year, they came with a sugar rush. By a huge margin, the most popular gift this year was – you guessed it – sweets. 

The second and third most popular gifts were flowers and beauty products.

It’s worth noting, though, that the flower conversations was heavily influenced by Miley Cyrus’ new hit song “Flowers,” which came just in time to mend all broken hearts on Valentine’s Day.

That’s a wrap!

This was our present for all marketers in celebration of Valentine’s Day. Gift-wrapped social data from our Brandwatch suite – and we hope you found it tasty.

If you want to give your marketing strategy a little treat and empower it with consumer research, our experts are just one click away.